


To Keep...

by Dormammu



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Explaining Steve's CACW Characterization, Feelings, M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Pining, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers is Bad at Feelings, Steve vs. Emotions, Steve's Letter to Tony Post-Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 08:45:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8660398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dormammu/pseuds/Dormammu
Summary: Steve only ever wanted for Tony to be happy. If wishes were fishes...(...he would probably find a way to mess it up too.)





	

When Steve finds out about Hydra's involvement in Starks' deaths, one of the first things on his mind is: Tony must know. Things come in the way of promptly telling him, but the resolve to tell him as soon as possible is strong.

  
As the search for his lost friend proves fruitless, Steve's decision to tell Tony resurfaces. He will set up the meeting himself, he decides. He does. On that same meeting they agree to re-form the Avengers. Natasha and Bruce are present too. They agree to call the others and pursue Hydra together.

  
Steve looks at Tony, into his face full of worry, sleeplessness, notices his one real smile when they all agree Avengers are needed again. He doesn't tell him.

  
He tells Peggy. About a friend he has, and a terrible secret weighing on him. He describes Tony at his happiest to her, shares his dread about Tony at his saddest. She asks him if this terrible secret is the only secret he's keeping from his friend. He feels his heart stop for a moment. She looks at him, her eyes reading him like an open book, then slips away from lucidity once more.

  
Over the time the Avengers live in Tony's tower, he looks Tony straight in the eye and doesn't tell him about his parents 453 times. He keeps the count. The count keeps _him_ up at night.

  
Somewhere around the first 100 Steve decides that Tony must never know that Hydra killed his parents.

  
Somewhere thereabouts he decides it's his secret to keep, forever if needed. Even if it turns out that Starks had died by his own friend's hand. If it comes to it, if somehow Bucky returns and confirms this doubt, Steve is the one who will tell Tony. He is the one who will take the brunt of Tony's anger, the brunt of his repulsors if needed. He hopes that day will never come, but if it does he is ready to face it.

  
Deep down in his heart, he knows this is wrong, but if the cost of this wrongness is only his soul, and Tony gets to live happily without such a shadow (another among so many) hanging over him, then it's a cost he'll gladly pay.

  
By that time, Peggy's lucid moments are too few and far in between. On one occasion, near the end, she asks him to look into a mirror, look into that man's eyes and ask him "What do you want?"

  
He doesn't do that. Because he knows the answer.

  
What he does do is, once Tony is not officially an Avenger and they're not living together anymore, Steve keeps his distance. He doesn't seek Tony out the way he sometimes did back in the tower, in the dark hours, for a chat, or to watch Tony work on one of his inventions. He'd look at his hands, listen to his voice, both so carefree, and decide once more he's doing a good thing.

  
When he does meet with Tony, it's, thankfully, in the company of other Avengers. Tony looks good. He jokes, he brings them "things he's been working on" and that's enough. Steve dares to smile only when he knows Tony isn't looking, otherwise he dons a mask of indifference. A mask of "I've got it covered, please go, live your life. (Be happy.)"

 

 

When it all gets complicated, with the Accords and Tony's insistence on signing them, Rumlow mentioning Bucky and that he remembered his former life, Peggy's death, he feels like he's suffocating. It's only with the help of Sam's friendship that he doesn't. But it only gets worse from then on.  
Bucky tells him and Sam about the mission in 1991. All of it. Steve feels the blood drain from his body. Sam of course doesn't know who the Target and His Wife characters in Bucky's story are, but Steve, painfully, does.

  
One thing is crystal clear in his mind: whatever he decides, whatever he does, he needs to keep them away from each other until he can talk to Tony himself. Tell him about Hydra's brainwashing once more, ask of him to forgive, ask him to take it out on him. It's all his fault, it always has been. Ever since 1944, when he thought Bucky was dead and didn't look for him.

  
He doesn't get the opportunity.

  
When the blow comes, and it comes hard, he has to look at Tony, the man he... He has to see the way his eyes lose their brilliance as they take in the footage of his parents' deaths, his father's head getting bashed in, his mother's windpipe crushed as she calls for help, her last words wasted on a merciless killing machine...

  
After that, Steve's on auto-pilot, his only aim to keep them both alive, at any cost.

  
When Bucky's escape fails, the one Steve urges him to attempt - still hoping the only person who needs to face Tony's anger is him, he does what he never, not even in his worst nightmares could have dreamed of doing - he beats down the one person he would have given anything for, with a man Tony just saw killing his parents. Only it's not Steve doing those things, he has left his body and is floating above it all, thinking how ugly the sketches of this would look if done in charcoal on white paper. He floats above and sketches them over and over again, black and ugly.

  
His hands finally force the shield into Tony's arc reactor. His and Tony's eyes meet, betrayal and disappointment written all over Tony's face, and Steve feels his own heart break beyond repair. But Tony is alive. Bucky too.

  
He picks up the shield without thinking, drops it the same way. He needs to get Bucky out of there.

  
When it turns out that king T'Challa is there, as well as Zemo, they take the quinjet. On Steve's earnest plea, T'challa agrees to leave his own jet to Tony.  
They make one stop, to Berlin. They deliver Zemo, and then, moments later, they're in Wakanda.

 

  
Steve puts on a brave face for Bucky, but he sees through it. They don't talk about it. The next day, Bucky tells him he wants to go back into cryo. Steve begs him not to, feels like the worst friend ever, feels so tired. Bucky doesn't back down. Next day, he is frozen again.

  
Steve then puts all the remains of his strength into thinking up a way to get Sam and other Avengers out of prison. His plan is to get in and punch his way through the guards. T'Challa agrees to help him with the surveillance and locks.

  
As he writes a letter for Tony on the morning of the day before the day of this jailbreak, he wants to tell him everything, bare his soul on ten or more pages, beg not for forgiveness, but for a chance to be in the same space with him again, look into his eyes and see happiness.

  
He does that, he pours his heart out, describes the sleepless nights back in the tower, then at the compound, tells him about keeping count, about not being able to look at himself in the mirror, about Peggy, about figuring out how much he wanted from Tony... By the end of that day, after hours of writing this letter he will send to Tony for sure, there are seventeen pages, both sides of which are filled top to bottom with everything he never said before. He writes until he falls asleep.

  
In the morning, he rips up that long letter into tiny pieces and writes another. His hands shake as he does it. This one is expected of him - the new liar and traitor him.

  
He starts, once more on auto-pilot, focuses on being succinct, on disclosing his jailbreak plan in as few, vague words as possible, adds some more words that mean nothing in the end.

  
The words "forgive me" never enter the equation.

  
Later that day, on their way to the underwater prison, T'Challa's jet makes a stop in upstate New York. Steve wants to make sure Tony will get the letter at the right moment.

  
On his way to the delivery service, he finds himself near the compound. From the safe distance he looks in one of the windows.

  
Someone, Tony, is walking around the common room. His step is slow, his face is still red with wounds Steve's own hands inflicted. Tony walks to the kitchen, looks into the sink, then straightens up, Steve can see he is saying something. Vision floats up to Tony. Tony points to the sink, Vision's shoulders slump. They exchange a few words, then Tony awkwardly pats Vision on the shoulder. As Vision floats off, Tony shakes his head and something, that even from a distance looks like a smile, appears on his face. Tony pours some coffee into his cup (Steve can almost smell the aroma of his favorite brand) and, sipping it carefully, starts walking towards the exact window through which Steve is looking.

  
Steve slowly ducks behind a wall and walks away before he can be seen.

  
On impulse, he adds a few more words to the letter. About family, between the lines begging Tony not to be a broken excuse for a human being like him. He also adds a burner phone to the package. He doesn't think about his other letter and that all _those_ pages too would have needed to be sent in a package.

  
He finds the delivery service closest to the compound, unloads the package there.

  
As he reenters the jet, he allows himself one small smile.

  
T'Challa notices and asks him what makes him smile after so many days of dark mood.

  
"Hope for my friends," Steve answers simply.

**Author's Note:**

> ...  
> ...  
> ...  
>  I wrote this fic to explain to myself Steve's CA:CW motivation in a way that allows me to still respect him. There's so much meta and words saying he never thought about Tony at all while keeping The Secret from him. I disagree. Steve not-caring is not my Steve. Guilt-ridden Steve caring too much, incapable of showing it, tying himself into knots to avoid hurting people, somehow ending up with even more damage on his hands because what are feelings, how do you emotions (is it punchable?), now that's a Steve I like!


End file.
